LMC leaders are reviewing a controversial surgery ban for smokers and obese patients just six months after it was implemented, after large numbers of appropriate referrals were bounced back to GPs.

LMC leaders approved the scheme by just one vote earlier this year, but Hertfordshire LMC said the implementation of the controversial policy had been ‘shambolic' and blighted by administrative blunders, with referrals for patients who met the criteria being inappropriately bounced back to GPs, and hospitals and GPs being given conflicting information on how to implement the policy.

The LMC said hospitals were rejecting ‘the vast majority' of patients referred with hip and knee problems even if they weren't being initially referred for surgery, which it attributed to ‘significant misunderstandings' on how to implement the policy.

Do go read the rest, as it will make you wonder how anyone could possibly cherish a service with an organisational capability which makes the Keystone Cops look efficient and professional.

Apart from the laughable incompetence, it did make me smile to think of how many rabid anti-smokers have had their operations rejected as a result of hysterical smoker bullying. Which, when you cut through the bullshit, was the whole point of the exercise.

They'd better get used to it, though, as sooner or later the NHS will find some way of restricting treatment for just about everyone. It's a natural progression for an idea which has long since outlived its practicality.

Rationing healthcare is the only option left once the idealistic set of demands have vastly exhausted all possible means of supply via tax funding. Hardly surprising when the thing was set up in the 1940s - a universe away from how we now live. The NHS defies basic economic principles when coupled with the human propensity to take every advantage of 'something for nothing' (or, more accurately, 'something we've paid for and will get our fill goddamit', like some Harvester all-you-can-eat salad cart).

And that's not even mentioning the hangers-on who refuse to stop sucking on the taxpayer teat, such as these scroungers.

I know what you may be thinking but, hey, don't shoot the messenger. Smokers and fatties are just easy targets, and this Herts cock up won't deter them for long. They'll learn to differentiate between their arse and their elbow soon, and launch the same kind of restrictions on the next unapproved set of 'clients' in their list, probably citing the 'successful' exclusion of smokers and the overweight as a precedent.

And so on, and so on.

At the moment, it's just those who enjoy baccy and/or a burger who are wondering why they are paying taxes for something they're not allowed to derive benefit from. Once other groups start seeing that their money is being taken by force, and that they aren't entitled to anything as a result, that'll be it for the NHS. A future of arguing over entitlement criteria, court cases, and claims for NI repayments. It only takes one award and the walls come tumbling down.

It's staggering that those who make their living from our taxes - for the purpose of fixing us when we're ill, no matter our circs as is their boast - can't see how the denial of the end result can possibly lead to anything else but the end of the NHS they see as sacrosanct.

9 comments:

"Once other groups start seeing that their money is being taken by force, and that they aren't entitled to anything as a result, that'll be it for the NHS. A future of arguing over entitlement criteria, court cases, and claims for NI repayments. It only takes one award and the walls come tumbling down."

Yes - bring it on! It will be just like the master tobacco settlement case over in the US that burdened the tobacco companies and led to the advertising ban, smoking bans and censorship - only in reverse this time - against people like the NHS, CRUK, ASH and the like - buried in an avalanche of court settlements, none of it running in their favour either.

I can see us reaching the point where the NHS won't be treating anybody anymore, but will exist just to sustain "preventative medicine" (as covered by Frank Davis in his blog) and all the hangers-on like ASH, Alcohol Concern et al. Oh, and the managers and their minions, of course.